Tech

Universal Video Chat? Polycom Is Getting Close

When Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's video-conferencing product, FaceTime, he promised Apple would work to break down the barriers between video services to make them all compatible with each other.

That never happened, of course. However, Polycom — a company that specializes in video-communication hardware — now appears to be taking on the challenge, unveiling a software product that combines contacts from Skype, Facebook, Google Talk and other apps into the same video call, all via a web browser.

The product is called RealPresence CloudAxis — it's an extension of Polycom's existing video-conferencing solutions. Basically it means if your business uses a Polycom system, now you can conference in anyone using those aforementioned supported services, and they'll have access to the same collaboration tools as the other participants, all through a browser window.

That's a pretty ambitious goal for a video-conferencing product, especially one that runs in a browser and can import contacts from other service with a mere hyperlink. But Polycom says its CloudAxis APIs bestow "extended interoperability" to video-collaboration services, with the same security and reliability as enterprise systems. We'll see — it won't be deployed until early 2013.

If it works, CloudAxis could give Polycom an edge in its rivalry with larger Cisco, who holds 41.9% of the video-conferencing market for enterprise, according to IDC. Polycom's share is 32.7%.

How do you like CloudAxis, and what would you expect from it? Sound off in the comments.

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